The Ordinary Seaman (10 page)

“Hijo de cien mil putas!” exclaimed Panzón. “I’ve never had beer in a can before. Está búfalo!”

“Búfalo!” assented El Faro with unfaked happiness for the first time since the night of the beating in los proyectos, when he’d lost his glasses.

Esteban, who’d been to war, and El Tinieblas, who’d been to prison, didn’t let them themselves get too excited about the beer—going three weeks without what you’re used to was nothing new to them, their postures seemed to say. I feel like drinking eighteen, thought Esteban. He imagined himself home in Corinto, drinking with his friends on the beach, savoring the memory more than the beer. But then, the last time, they’d gone from the beach to that burdel—where she’d rolled over on her belly and thrust her smooth little nalgas up at him, looking at him over her shoulder, and right there he’d hallucinated that she’d turned into a fiendishly grinning dog, and now a heavy sigh poured out of him, he stared down sadly at the can in his hand, told himself, Fuck it, ni verga, it was right for him to be trapped on a broken ship with fourteen other males.

There was enough beer for each member of the crew to have two. When José Mateo reached into the cooler for another, Tomaso Tostado announced that he was saving
his
second beer for after dinner. El Faro said that was a good idea. And Pínpoyo said, “Why not?” And everyone looked at the cook crouched over the cooler. Mesmerized as they were by the pleasure of that first beer, the second loomed as an immense problem—suddenly it seemed terrible to have no more beer left if they had two so quickly, a beerless barbecue, meeting, and night stretching ahead—which Tomaso Tostado had just solved. He’s smart, always knows just what to say, Tomaso Tostado; with jowly cheeks and solemn Indian eyes in a square head he looks like a pensive rabbit, one with a daffy smile now, gold tooth over missing teeth. José Mateo grunted, dropped the can back into the cooler, and trudged back into the mess, where Bernardo was husking corn and taking small sips from his beer,
letting it chill and then slowly warm his mouth before swallowing. The water in the battered aluminum pot on the little two-burner butane stove was taking a long time to boil. José Mateo picked up Bernardo’s can and took a long, greedy drink.

“You can have the rest,” said Bernardo. “But I get one of your ears of corn.”

The cook drank down the rest of the beer without even answering.

Outside, on the horizon, clouds were massed into the shape of a long, opaquely black bow tie, half a mottled moon protruding over the knot in the yellowish gray sky. A breeze, faint and odorless, strained through the brackish harbor heat, the new smell of burning charcoal, like a ghost stepping through a wall.

Capitán Elias said to let the charcoal cook for another twenty minutes or so; each taking a beer, their first, the officers went inside to the corridor, climbed the switchback stairs to the bridge. The crew stood around the barbecue grill anticipating steak as if deliciously seared, crunchy steak fat was already melting down to nothing inside their salivating mouths, empty stomachs growling and crumpling. So they didn’t even notice the first slow dollops of rain. José Mateo came out of the mess for another beer just as the rain began pelting down faster. He glanced at the others with slit-eyed disbelief, wheeled the grill into the passage under the deckhouse’s second level, went for his “second” beer. Then the hungry daydreamers woke up, hurrying for cover and into the mess. Thunder rumbled low in the sky, and as if this was the signal for all the dancers in the chorus to charge out from the wings at once, stiff and steady rain swept over the ship, clattering against the deck, steaming off the jumping water in the cove.

When the officers came down from the bridge, Capitán Elias was carrying the Coleman lamp and Mark the radio-cassette player that they usually kept locked up in the wheelhouse; encased in black plastic, this music box wasn’t as large as the ones los blacks brought to the pier at night. Mark set the music box down on the floor in a corner of the mess, tuned it to a Spanish-language station, stood up and smiled, looking around as if he wanted to say something. All eyes focused on the music
box, its beady red light glowing, as Spanish, so familiar yet unfamiliar, roared like a separate small storm in an iron corner of the mess: a manly, rolling baritone playing the part of a mouthwash battling the quickly vanquished and squealing nemeses, Placa y Ginjivitis. Next, barely audible above the roar of rain outside, came the mournfully hushed, feminine tones of “Cruz de Navaja” by Grupo Mecano, a song Esteban had frequently heard over the radio and on jukeboxes in Nicaragua: he sat back against the bulkhead, eyes shut, immersed in the soft, floating voice more than in the lyrics of betrayed love and murder, the female, whispery singing like a voice long lost inside his own memory …

Outside, in the shielded but puddling passage between deckhouse and rain, Capitán Elias barbecued the steaks while José Mateo stood by his side, giddily enfolded in the embrace of oncoming inebriation. He’d traded his steak away for Bernardo’s second beer too, and was feeling happy, repentant, and sentimental all at once: the story his newly aroused blood was telling him had somehow awakened a warm and unfamiliar wave of self-love in the cook.

“Tengo un problemita con alcohol, mi Capitán,” José Mateo announced, in a swollen-chested, decorous tone. “Y el problemita es este: La verdad es que, pues, lo quiero mucho.”

Capitán Elias glanced at José Mateo with a bemused smile, said that while he liked alcohol too, he probably wouldn’t go so far as to say he was in love with it, though who knows, sometimes you don’t realize how in love you are until it’s too late, no? And the cook cackled, nodded his head, and said, “Así es, mi Capi.” Elias went back to his busy barbecuing, shuffling partly cooked steaks onto a pile at the edge of the grill and pulling others over the red coals.

José Mateo shrugged his shoulders heavily, folded his arms, cocked his head to one side, and narrowed his eyes; then he raised his chin and said almost defiantly, “Two bottles of rum a day, or of tequila, as much beer as I could hold, that was never a problem for me …” Claro, he’d been in too many drunken brawls in cantinas when he was younger but had survived them all more or less intact, blown all his money on puchilachas in brothels now and then, woke up lying on some sidewalk
in a foreign port city without his wallet a few times, that was all. But always a ship waiting for him, a place to sober up and sleep it off and get back to work, he could always count on that, mi Capitán. But the last job he’d had, on the
Tamaulipas,
there was a radio operator, a Mexican called El Peperami, híjole, as bad a drunk as me. The ship spent two days taking on cargo in Vancouver. And he and El Peperami, they’d been into the city, drinking all through the night and into the morning, but they made it back somehow. And as the ship was still loading, they got another bottle of tequila and a fishing rod, went and sat at the end of the pier, behind some containers piled up there. When their crewmates finally found them, they were both passed out cold. They loaded them like two large sacks of cement onto the prongs of two forklifts, which two dockworkers drove back to the ship. And then they were put inside a cargo net and hoisted up on deck at the end of a cargo hook. And that’s where he woke up, out on deck at night, shivering with cold, El Peperami snoring away beside him, both of them still inside that net, the ship plowing out to sea … Until that hijueputa of a Norwegian capitán came by, told them they were fired. They were put off at the next port, Anchorage, Alaska. Carajo, qué humiliación. For all he knows, El Peperami is still there, working on one of those offshore fish-canning factory ships. But he used up the rest of his money flying back to Managua, a big mistake, mi Capitán. Has a little house there that he lets an old aunt and her daughter live in; he’d had hopes of marrying that cousin but, bueno, it hasn’t worked out. Has a small fortune in now totally worthless cordobas in the bank …

José Mateo laughed a harsh cackle from the back of his throat.

And the barbecuing capitán smiled and said, “Esa es una trágica historia, Cocinero.”

“Pero lo que te quiero decir,” stammered José Mateo, “es que … este… Pues, bueno,” and he stopped. He stared out at the rain through heavy-lidded, slitted eyes, his pupils two dots of murky bewilderment. Then he looked at Capitán Elias again and said, “Putamadre mi Capi—este barco es único.”

Capitán Elias tonelessly replied that it was definitely a unique ship and asked José Mateo if he’d mind telling the muchachos that the meat was done.

The crew ate sitting on the floor in the mess—dark but for the coppery light radiating from the Coleman lamp, barely casting a glow on rust-hued bulkheads—plates between their legs, on their laps, balanced in one hand under their chins. They chewed and chewed, for the steak was tough, with faraway looks in their eyes or eyes squeezed shut, murmuring, groaning with pleasure; washed the meat down with cold cans of soda; sopped up blood and grease with clumps of bread. A slowly widening puddle of rainwater was seeping in through the mess door. Brassy music, mainly salsa, blared tinnily from the music box in the corner now. They devoured their corn, surprised at the softness and diminutiveness of the kernels on this gringo corn, the delicate sweetness smothered in chili habanero sauce; buried meat and corn under heaping portions of gooey potato salad. José Mateo gnawed fiendishly at his ragged, denuded corncob, held it against his teeth noisily sucking moist air, biting into the cob as if that might release a little more—feeling sorry for the cook, Bernardo gave him back half the steak he’d bartered away; passed the other half, along with his extra ear of corn, to Esteban. By the end of the meal they all felt so stuffed they couldn’t even eat all the Oreo cookies.

Then, when everyone but Bernardo and the cook had finally started in on his deferred second beer, Capitán Elias stood in the middle of the floor and said he had a few things he wanted to talk to them about. But Tomaso Tostado interrupted, rising to his feet to thank the officers for the meal and the beer, clearly a tiding of better times ahead on the
Urus,
and everyone applauded and cheered, El Barbie blowing shrieking whistles with his fingers in his mouth, while Capitán Elias stood there curtly nodding, a small, rigid smile on his face, his T-shirt dark with sweat over his chest, under his arms, the crown of his high forehead slick and gleaming. Just as they’d anticipated, he began the meeting by telling the crew that he was satisfied with their progress so
far. “Everyone has been working hard. I can’t ask for more than that,” said Capitán Elias. The owner was very pleased, and, anticipating a reasonably imminent departure, was reinitiating his search for a new cargo to carry. “But I’m afraid I have some not so good news too, caballeros.” Due to the longer than originally expected delay in port, the canceled cargo, the mounting berthing fees, the price of all equipment and materials, the cost of reinsuring the ship… the owner was having a cash flow problem. As soon as the ship was declared seaworthy and the new cargo contracted, they’d be paid, of course. He and Mark were forgoing payment too—and him with a baby on the way, bills up the culo to pay, his wife wasn’t too thrilled! But there was a bright side to all of this, no? What did they need cash for in Brooklyn? They were illegal once they went off the ship anyway. Wouldn’t it be better, for themselves and for their families back home, to be paid all at once as soon as the ship was ready to sail? Hadn’t they all come here for a chance to better their economic circumstances and help their families? Better that than blowing their pay on televisions, watches, radios, and other junk in Brooklyn, verdad?

When Capitán Elias was finished, the crew sat and stood around the mess in sullen silence, warily watching him as if waiting for something more. El Capitán stood with his hands deep in the pockets of his jeans now, looking from face to face. Mark, leaning against the table that supported their stove, fidgeted with his car keys. Miracle lay on the floor, head on paws, as if depressed by the lingering odor of steak in the closed, muggy air.

Bernardo was the first to speak up. “Capitán,” he said, and el Capitán looked over. Pausing to gather his thoughts, Bernardo nervously rubbed his nose. He said, “To me, this sounds unjust. Pues, sí.” He nodded emphatically. “Let’s not hide the truth, Capitán, this ship is a swamp of safety and maritime labor violations, and now this,
un gran insultol
I think these muchachos know how to manage their own money. A trip into Times Square to see a movie, a hamburger at McDonald’s, that would not be a wasteful spending spree. Instead, Capitán, you ask us to be slaves—”

“No, Bernardo!” Capitán Elias jumped in vehemently as if to smother any echo of the waiter’s words, eyes suddenly shiny and intense. “That just isn’t true!” He said that was absolutely the wrong way to look at it, a purely emotional reaction,
Bernardo.
Because slaves don’t get paid, but they were going to be paid every cent they were owed! So how could Bernardo say such a thing, him with so many years of maritime experience? Shipboard violations, pues claro, but wasn’t that what they’d all been hired to take care of? Every day there were fewer. “Can you tell me what else it is you think we’re all doing here, Bernardo?” Certainly, a hard job, a tough situation. Capitán Elias said he’d never been through anything like it either. But laws protected them. Panamanian law. International laws. United States laws covering every ship in port, regardless of flag. “The ownership has to pay us or this ship doesn’t move. It’s as simple as that! Isn’t that true, Bernardo?”

When Capitán Elias was done, Bernardo looked down at his hands clasped over his waist, at his wrist as if he still wore a watch there, and then up again.

“Espero que sí, Capitán,” he said firmly.

This part of the meeting went on a little longer. Various members of the crew forced themselves to find new ways of asking, without sounding too childishly plaintive, if el Capitán really was absolutely certain they were going to be paid; again and again, they received the same patient assurances. Finally, when Capitán Elias asked again if there were any more questions, he was met with averted gazes and silence.